Joy Agner is a young American who is preparing a job for the university. He's looking for research materials in Guatemala. He is waiting for photocopies to be brought to him at a bookstore in the capital. A grown woman owns the store, she's a cutie, she's a redhead. One of the books that the young man has asked to photocopy Guatemala: It is the Memory of Silence, the result of the dossier sponsored by the United Nations. The woman comes to the young man: “Do you know that one of the authors of this was murdered?” Agner explains that he is comparing the numbers of homicides during the war with the current ones. “Things are the same,” says the shopkeeper. “God has not changed. They wanted to destroy us before, and they wanted to destroy

us today.” This is how Joy Agner begins her article The Silent Violence of Peace in Guatemala. It was published on May 14 at the North American Congress on Latin America. This foundation, which channels solidarity with Latin America from the United States, says in its presentation, denounces the effort of its government to subvert democracies and put dictators in South America, and the subsequent spread of poverty throughout the continent with neoliberal policies since the 1990s.

Agner has heard the same opinions from many voices. Threats, violent robberies, kidnappings and murders are the daily bread of conversation among Guatemalan citizens. It is not the imagination of the people, the statistics confirm it. The annual number of violent deaths during the civil war from 1960 to 1996 has been exceeded. Between 1970 and 1996 there were 5,000 homicides per year in Guatemala, compared with 5,884 in 2006.

Between 2001 and 2005, homicides increased by 60 per cent. Violent deaths of women 127%. The researcher has been recognized by the Ombudsman or Ombudsman for Human Rights of Guatemala that 10% of all of them are caused by operations that seek “social cleansing”.

This terrible violence spreads terror among the population. Brutality is difficult to understand and tolerate normally. The worst thing is that there is a lot of confusion about the perpetrators and the culprits. Even though the media is talking about crime, who is behind the murderers?

The commission sought to clarify what happened in the previous war in Guatemala: In his special investigation Memoria del Silencio highlighted that most of the massacres and crimes were committed by the state, the army, the police and the paramilitaries controlled by them. However, in those years the media accused the killings mainly of the guerrillas. “Today,” writes Agner, “the state and the mainstream media attribute crime to gangs and common sick people, but the evidence shows that the Guatemalan government has a lot to do with this growing number of deaths. ‘They are carrying out a sweet genocide’, as we heard from a woman at an indigenous conference.”

Tactics to ‘clean up’ society

Joy
Agner has also received the same opinion from the structures of the state. When he went to the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman for questioning, a member of the Ombudsman brought him more information than he had requested and explained the keys to many of the deaths that occurred. “It’s more than a question of famous gangs or maras. This is strategic. This is social cleansing, social cleansing. The authorities are involved in this.”

The murders caused by gangs or common thieves have notable characteristics: they keep the dead body with them as little time as possible, they can not waste time if they do not want to be arrested, they do not have the structure to carry the bodies with them... Gangs kill someone either to protect themselves or as revenge.

On the other hand, when there is social cleansing or state-sponsored violence involved, they are of very different characteristics. The aim is to destroy a certain group of society and to spread terror. That’s why they will often leave their bodies brutally mutilated, strangled, fragmented, full of beatings or handcuffs tied. In recent years, Guatemala has witnessed a large increase in the number of bodies that have been mutilated or exposed to traces of torture. If there were 22 in 2004, in 2005 they reached 305.

These murders are usually planned, and the murderers want this behavior to have a great impact on the population. The murderers need money and protection. Twelve percent of the victims killed in Guatemala in 2005 were found massacred and far from where they were killed. This is the following: 648 remains ceded to strategic sites, abandoned to be found by other citizens. Thousands of citizens have had to find these along the way over the years, terrible images that could prevent them from falling asleep for months and years.

The State uses the simplest form of support for this ethnic and social cleansing: Murders are not investigated in Guatemala. He's not a forensic researcher. The cato of social cleansing promises it. A representative of the United Nations, Philip Alston, denounces this laziness. It is not because of a lack of resources, because Guatemala is not poorer than its neighboring countries: in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, which are poorer than it, they have more police, judges and litigation.

If during the war violence was used mainly in rural areas, now the massacres are carried out in urban areas. The military provoked genocide under the pretext of “counter-insurgency” during the war. The remains of those killed by soldiers and paramilitaries appeared headless, quartered or quixal-like, often perpetrated after the death of the victim to increase the terror of the people.

Today it happens in the same way, but under the pretext of famous bands or maras. With the same objective: to paralyze the population, not to attack the state. The aforementioned UN representative, Alston, stated in his 2007 report: “The methods of the Guatemalan government are hardly distinguishable from counter-insurgency tactics” and “today’s policy is equivalent to that famous doctrine of ‘national security’ that led the country to disaster in the 1970s and 1980s.” As a result of this behavior by the state, which seems paradoxical, in the absence of the old

guerrillas, many young people now seek refuge in the maras in question. Joy Agner talks to those who walk or have walked in groups, and that is why she says: “There is no doubt that the high percentage of murders in Guatemala is attributable to gang violence. But how many young men have not joined these gangs as a reaction to the terror that the government itself has directly or indirectly spread?

Since November 2007, Guatemala has had a new president, Álvaro Colom. What the military and the oligarchy didn't want. He's gonna need some strength.

For more information

• Reference article by Joy Agner on the site of the Northr American Congress on Latin America
• About Guatemala Solidarity Network
• In Guatemala: The Memory of Silence Book
• My World, a rich blog full of photos and chronicles by James Rodriguez
• Guatemala on Wikipedia in English
• Ombudsman for Human Rights of Guatemala